One genre of mobile apps gaining precedent and popularity in India, especially among women, are safety mobile apps which not only alert your near and dear ones, but will also provide your exact location in case of an emergency.

India's Tech Mahindra launched Fightback in 2011, charging users were charged an annual subscription of INR 100 (US$1.83). However, after the recent cases of rape and violence against women in New Delhi and across India, Tech Mahindra has made the app available for free and also is in negotiations with Delhi Police to integrate the app with their systems.

Fightback is an India specific mobile app, available for select Google Android, Blackberry, and Nokia smartphones. It uses readily available technologies on a smartphone for emergencies such as GPRS, GPS, and SMS, to enable both real-time tracking and to send alerts to five emergency contacts.

The setup can be done in either of two ways: traditional signup with name and e-mail; and login with your Facebook account. You then log in and also provide your mobile phone number, although, this information does not require verification.

Once set up, the GPS tracking feature--called My Location--displays the location of the user. Another feature called My Tracks logs all active locations of the app, and also where the data connection was turned on, and did not work.

The panic alert feature works in two ways. After pressing and holding the panic button on the app for 5 seconds, an SOS message is sent, and the portal alerts page on the Flightback Web site is updated with live alert data, and shows the location of the alert using Google Maps. The portal also sends out SMS messages to emergency contact mobile numbers provided by the user.

In addition to the Flightback Web portal, the user's Facebook status also gets updated with the SOS message. All friends of the user who sent the SOS message can view the message details via Facebook, which includes the location and timestamp.

The site of consists of live alerts with both the time and place of the alerts for public viewing, without disclosing the identity of the victim. The app can be downloaded for free.

Originally from Canada, Nitin has been residing and working in India since 2009. He has worked in different ICT industries in countries such as India, Canada, and Tanzania. He is an avid follower and application developer within the growing mobile phone sector in India.